Chapter Text
28th of April, 1986
Kiev, Kyiv Oblast, United Slavic SSR
The Verkhovna Rada, in Yurij Eduardovych’s opinion, was too much of a building for what was left of his homeland.
After the Great Rebuilding’s dismantling of the Ukranian SSR it had gone from being the building within which the will of the Ukranan people made itself heard to just being the administrative and core of a single oblast amongst many. A grand building that now hosted congresses and meetings, not his people’s parliament. Sometimes, when he felt particularly patriotic, it filled him with vitriol for what General Secretary Kirillovich and his clique had done… But most of the time he just felt apathetic. Why should he care? He had good enough pay to take good care of his sisters, and his day to day duties were fulfilling enough. What else could a man want?
Today, however, the day to day job was nothing but a mirage, a shadow from the past, chaos permeated the very walls of the old parliament, he could hear shouting and heated arguments coming from the insides of every office. Clerks and secretaries like himself ran all over trying to appease and attend to their superiors.
Unlike him, who was trying to make his way to his superior in order to appease his superior’s superior . Totally different... Totally.
Finally, after shoving his way through a particularly congested area, a feat considering his frail constitution and short stature, he reached his objective.
Boris Yevdokimovich Shcherbina, Chairman of the Edino-Slavjanskaja’s Sovet Ministrov, and most importantly, the man in charge of dealing with the insanity currently going on in Chernobyl. The man who, for the time being, had the weight of the entire Union’s future on his back.
“Ah, Yurij…” The taller man greeted him with a tired sigh and a long draw from his cigarette. “I hope you bring me better news than all those parasitic paper-pushers.”
“Sir, I’m afraid that, while I’m not sure, the fact that I got this .” Yurij passed a large and bloated manilla envelope to the vice-chairman. “From the MAKD… It won’t be good.”
Boris went as pale as a corpse, it was understandable, getting any kind of communication or contact from the Ministerstvo Protivo-chudovishnoj Oborony, the Ministry of Anti-Kaiju Defense, was for a politician akin to getting a call from a doctor when an aging relative is hospitalized. Yurij could empathise, he’d received one such call regarding his mama 6 months before.
He stood there, almost like an awkward teenager, not knowing what to do with his arms and hands, or whether it was ok for him to sit down on one of the chairs lining the left wall, so he just stood rigidly as his boss opened the envelope and started skimming over the first few pages of one of the documents in the envelope. The sounds of the chaos going on outside were only somewhat muted by the large office’s doors.
It was hard to tell, but he may have stood there for almost half an hour, just trying not to make any sound which would bother Mr. Shcherbina. The man was so engrossed with his reading, he could have been mistaken for a statue had it not been for his constant, clockwork-like drags from his cigars (He was on his fifth, Yurij had counted them in an attempt to distract himself) or his sporadic grimaces. Sometimes his eyes would go as wide as plates or he’d blink in confusion, but most of the time he simply seemed to gather even more stress, more than the younger bureaucrat thought possible.
“Yurij!” The man suddenly shouted, throwing the entire stack of reports and paperwork on his already overcrowded desk. “Head up to Prípyat, immediately, and alone. Don’t tell anyone anything and go directly to Tarakov. Tell him to put his men on high alert and that I’ll be there as soon as I can get away from the blood-suckers here.”
“Sir, wha-”
“GO!” The man’s shout and the subsequent hand strike to his desk not only quickstart Yurij’s fight or flight response, but also noticeably silenced the cacophony outside.
“Ye-yes sir.” He stammered.
But as he turned around and started walking as fast as he could towards the door, Shcherbina’s parting statement gave him pause.
“Eduardovych… You are a good kid… Make sure you forget everything that you have seen and heard and which you will see and hear today… Will you?”
Yurij didn’t even waste time to turn around, he merely nodded as he opened the door and headed out. That hadn’t been the steel-cold voice of one of the USSR’s strong men, it was the voice of the ex-rail worker who had always taken note whenever Yurij had brought a new photo of his sisters to decorate his modest desk.
28th of April, 1986
Príyat, Kyiv Oblast, United Slavic SSR
It was late, well into the night, and still, there probably wasn’t a single soul resting. Chernobyl couldn’t afford anyone resting, Europe couldn’t.
Boris Shcherbina had nothing but respect for Nikolai Tarakanov. And while the General, unlike Boris, had been too young to serve in the Great Patriotic War, he more than made up for the lack of experience in Boris’ eyes. Not only had he obtained a doctorate (a much higher level of education than what he could boast) but he had also gained enough experience in both dealing with Kaiju and man while posted as a guard to the Aktau-Altay Rail project.
Because of that, when they both made sure that they were truly, truly , alone in Nikolai's office, he was completely honest.
“We are going to die.” He started as he lit himself a cigar. He offered to light Tarakanov’s and the man accepted.
“Yes,” The general agreed. “If the radiation doesn’t kill us, it’ll be the trial for failing to contain the leaks, or the trial for not containing them fast enough, or…” The stout military man looked pointedly at him.
“Or the MAKD will.” He finished.
The two stood in silence, they had both received very similar envelopes containing very similar documents.
But after what felt like an eternity, the general broke the silence.
“General Yakovich called me an hour before you arrived.”
“Another surprise .” Boris thought, probably just another one on an endless parade.
General Yakovich, probably the first man in the history of the USSR to deserve every single one of his condecorations and medals, “Siberia’s Shield” and the man who had almost single-handedly propelled General Secretary Kirillovich to the highest authority in the Soviet Union.
And most importantly to their conundrum, the co-founder and military attache to the MAKD.
“And…?” Boris goaded Nikolai on.
“He said ‘If there’s the slightest chance of the tunnel being ready in time, burn the documents, If there isn’t..’ He said that if we couldn’t do it, to call him back.”
Boris said nothing at first, just deeply inhaled another smoke-filled breath, futilely hoping that it would help him calm his nerves.
“How is the tunnel go-?” The general started asking.
“Like shit,” Boris confessed. “The miners are dropping like flies, they are digging a tunnel under two reactor’s worth of radioactive material, which is currently trying its hardest to melt itself into the FUCKING DNIEPER, with only a few metres of dirt to contain the radiation, they are literally dying almost as fast as we are recruiting them, and progress is as slow as swimming through tar!!” Boris exploded.
They had tried their best to deal with the two reactor’s meltdowns, but that had still meant thousands evacuated and hundreds dead or dying.
Boris had pulled every string, called in every favour and made all the promises to get the scientists, the soldiers and miners the best tools and all resources possible to contain and clean Chernobyl. But even that wasn’t enough.
And the worst was still to come, how many would die if the material reached the water table? Half of old Ukraine? There were millions of people on the Black Sea’s coasts, millions more along the Mediterranean, how many lives destroyed would that amount to?
And that was without considering the Kaiju. How many of those demons would be born from the radiation? How many it would attract like light to a moth…
Attract…
They looked at each other, Boris knew what the General was thinking about as much as the General knew he was. Even if they somehow contained the material, how many men would Nikolai have to sacrifice to remove the equally poisonous debri?
And with the resolve of a man looking into the muzzles of a firing squad, the Chairman of the Edino-Slavjanskaja, the man who had as his only true duty the protection and wellness of all of those he called his people, he crossed the room and grabbed the phone on General Yakovich’s desk.
“So this is what shaking the Devil’s hand feels like.” The younger man muttered.
1st of May, 1986
Chernobyl, Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Zone of Alienation , United Slavic SSR
Yurij didn’t know what to think of Dr. Zura Geladze. The bizarre MAKD official had arrived in Kiev the very same day Yurij’s superior had received the envelope to oversee “Operatsiya Prazdnik.” The exact same day.
The man seemed to always simultaneously be completely focused and distracted at the same time. And he had not seen the biologist-turned-official drink, eat or smoke even once in the last few days, not even a single cup of coffee.
But, if he was being honest, he couldn’t care less about the scientist even at that moment, his attention was solely focused on the sight before him.
The main road heading into Chernobyl from the Northeast, which he had been assured they were observing from a secure distance, was currently hosting the strangest of parades.
Some kinds of tanks, which to Yurij’s limited experience looked like heavily modified T-34, were marching in a convoy.
The convoy at the center of which was the first, and hopefully last, Kaiju he had ever seen.
The monster had big enough mouths that it could probably hold one of the tanks inside it with only the cannon sticking out, and had a long and low to the ground body which vaguely reminded him of the lizards he and his sisters had used to hunt for in between rocks when they were kids during their summer vacations. Now, with the reptilian monster before him slowly lumbering towards the city, those memories were forever tainted.
Of course, the size wasn’t what really stole his breath, and neither were the enormous claws, or the black-and-yellow scale armour covering its body.
It was the fact that the beast didn’t have a maw, it had maws , three enormous heads branching out of its torso and constantly surveying the area from their vantage points on top of the beast’s snake-like necks.
Radioactive red eyes staring into his soul.
“He’s Zmei Gorynich you know.” The scientist commented, the words didn’t even register with the astonished clerk. “He’s the one from the tales. Did your mother tell them to you? Mine did.”
“We found him sleeping in a cavern near Kursk, it took a lot of explosives to wake him up,” The man laughed at his own comment.
“He eats radiation, or at least we think that’s what he does. The fact that he started walking here the moment he woke up is proof enough I think, sometimes I think he doesn't even notice us.”
Finally, Yurij found his words.
“Are you insane?!”
“Me? Not really. Us as a whole? Probably.” Dr. Geladze answered nonchalantly.
A day later, when the beast finally reached the installations, it simply dug into what remained of the 3rd and 4th reactors until the multiple tons of material of the molten cores were open to the sky, so radioactive that no human could ever survive seconds of exposure to them...
And it bit down .
It didn’t tear off chunks, or swallow, it merely bit down and held , unmoving, like a monstrous statue.
A week later, the ambiental radiation had lowered so much than one could walk up to the gaping remains of the reactor with no protective equipment. Zmey did not move, but his six eyes kept track of those daring enough to come close.
A month later, repairs to reactors 1 & 2 would be given green light to commence. Zmey did not move.
Two months later, the inhabitants of Prípyat were allowed to return to their homes.
By six months, Boris Shcherbina, the Union's new and louded minister for atomic energy, would order the construction of reactors 5 and 6 to be restarted. Zmey did not move.
His eyes kept track of the workers at all times.
They always will.